Turkey, Greece to resume confidence-building talks

ANKARA — NATO neighbors Turkey and Greece have agreed to resume confidence-building talks that were frozen in 2022, the Turkish Defense Ministry announced Wednesday.

Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler and his Greek counterpart Nikos Dendias agreed on the move during a congratulatory phone conversation between the two over their new posts. “The two ministers agreed to the resumption of the confidence-building measures meetings and to discuss the details during NATO’s Vilnius summit [next week],” according to a Turkish readout of Wednesday's call.

The announcements are the culmination of a series of fence-mending steps between the two countries after the twin February earthquakes that killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey's southeast. Dendias, who served as the foreign minister under the previous Greek government until he was tapped as the new defense chief in the new Cabinet unveiled last week, became one of the first top diplomats to visit Turkey after the devastating earthquakes. 

Dendias and Guler also agreed to keep channels of dialogue open, according to the Turkish readout. 

The confidence-building negotiations were suspended last year at the peak of an escalation between the two NATO-member neighbors over conflicted territorial claims. Lashing out at Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis over lobbying the US Congress against military sales to Turkey, Turkish President Recep Tayyip announced the suspension in May 2022.

Wednesday's call came a week after Erdogan called Mitsotakis to congratulate him on his re-election. Following the call, Greek media outlets reported that Erdogan and Mitsotakis were set to hold their first face-to-face meetings after their respective election victories, on the sidelines of NATO’s annual summit in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, on July 11-12. The potential meeting has yet to be confirmed by either capital. 

Ankara and Athens had agreed to launch the confidence-building negotiations in the early 1990s in a bid to maintain restraint in military ties, but the process has seen several suspensions over the course of decades following.